Sharma Monika Architect

My office for Sharma Monika Architect is over at 66, Railway Mandi. It’s a busy area, and there is always something going on right outside the window. I spend most of my time drawing up plans or looking at site photos on my old monitor. Being an architect means carrying a lot of rolled-up papers around most of the time. The space here is filled with rulers, pencils, and old folders that I really should organize one day. I’ve lived around here long enough to know the local building styles pretty well. People come in wanting to fix up their old houses or maybe build something small from scratch on a tight budget. I try to listen to what they actually need instead of just drawing whatever is trendy in the magazines. Sometimes the coffee machine breaks, and those are definitely the tough days around here. Architecture isn't always glamorous. It's a lot of checking regulations and making sure the measurements are right so the walls don't fall down later. I’ve been working from this spot for a while now. The light in the afternoons is quite good for sketching at my desk. You can hear the trains sometimes if the wind is blowing the right way toward the Mandi. It’s just me and a couple of helpers sometimes. We keep things simple and focus on the bricks and mortar. It’s a steady kind of life, seeing a drawing eventually become a real building you can walk into. The office walls are covered in sketches that never went anywhere.